The Madras High Court on Wednesday sought a detailed reply from the Election Commission over allegations of the Puducherry unit of the BJP obtaining cell phone numbers of local voters to canvass through WhatsApp.

In his public interest writ petition, Anand, Puducherry unit president of the Democratic Youth Foundation of India, alleged local BJP candidates had obtained the cell phone numbers from the Unique Identification Authority of India and created WhatsApp groups in their respective constituencies for campaigning. He wanted the court to set up a special investigation team to probe the issue and restrain the BJP candidates from doing so.

When the matter came up today, counsel for the EC told the first bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy that the complaint received from DYFI in this connection has been forwarded to the Cyber Crime Cell for inquiry. The EC was directed by the bench to submit its reply on Friday.